A short video by Tim Hubbard advising hosts against broadly filtering out first-time Airbnb guests. Hubbard argues that many millions of new guests book stays—especially during high-demand events—and that excluding them (via a “prior experience” filter) risks losing high-paying bookings; the real issues lie in hosts’ operations and vetting processes.
Chapters
Last year, Airbnb had over 10 million new guests. That's very like the millions of guests that stayed in properties for the first time. So a lot of super hosts that have been through the challenges sometimes of having new guests have filtered out the ability for new guests to book at their property. There is a filter within HostAway as a host that you can check, and it says your guest needs prior experience. But we know that there's millions of new good guests, and the problem is not with the new guests. The problem is with your setup and your operations and how you're vetting these guests. More new guests are staying during times of high demand. So if we think about Taylor Swift coming to town on all the hotels get booked up, these guests are often not going to stay in the hotel because they're not available. So they broaden their search and they end up staying in an Airbnb and they very often end up really enjoying it during these high demand times. These new guests are paying top dollar. And so if you have them filtered out and they're not able to see your property, well, you could be missing out on some really high income days.
